1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a character information copying system, a recording apparatus, and a recording method in which information opened on a computer communication network is copied and the copied information can be easily recorded as character information of each program on a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, a magnetooptic disc apparatus for recording and reproducing a program such as music or the like onto a magnetooptic disc such as an MD (Mini Disc; registered trade name) has been known. In the MD, for example, a program comprising digital music data or the like which was compression encoded by an ATRAC (Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Coding) system is recorded and management information of the recorded program is recorded on the inner rim side. An area in which the management information is recorded is called U-TOC (Userxe2x80x94Table Of Contents) area.
The program is managed on a track unit basis. For example, when the program is music data, one music piece can be recorded as one track. By designating a desired track upon reproduction, the music piece recorded on this track, namely, music data is reproduced.
The U-TOC area is constructed by, for example, 32 sectors. In a sector 1 and a sector 4 among them, character information such as title names or the like corresponding to the recorded program is managed. The sectors 1 and 4 correspond to different character forms. For example, in the sector 1, alphabets expressed by ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) codes are managed. In sector 4, character information comprising Kanji (Chinese characters), Hiragana, or the like expressed by character codes based on ISO (International Organization for Standardization)xe2x80x948859-1 or shift JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) is managed. An area to manage a correspondence between track information of the program and character information is provided for each sector and a pointer of the character information corresponding to the track is written in this area.
The character information is inputted by operating a key provided for the magnetooptic disc apparatus, a key provided on a remote controller, or the like.
A case of inputting character information to the MD will now be considered. For instance, title information of a music piece is inputted and recorded for the music data recorded on each track. In the above case, hitherto, it is necessary to select a track to be inputted each time information is inputted. Hitherto, each time alphabets, Kanji, or Hiragana is inputted, it is necessary to designate a memory area to be inputted.
Hitherto, character information such as album title, music piece title, singer name, and the like has to be inputted by the operation of the key provided for the magnetooptic disc apparatus or the key provided on the remote controller. The inputting operation is complicated and is a troublesome operation for the user.
For example, in a computer communication network such as Internet, much information regarding each commercially available CD (Compact Disc) has been opened. For example, when a new CD is released or the like, there is a case where a sales agency opens the recorded contents of the CD as an HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) file onto a homepage of Internet for the purpose of sales promotion. There is also a case where an individual such as a lover of music or the like opens the information such as recorded contents of a CD or the like on his homepage. Further, by using what is called a search engine, for instance, information such as recorded contents of the CD or the like on the homepage can be searched by a keyword such as a singer name or music piece title.
It is, therefore, an object of the invention to provide a digital signal recording system, a character code input apparatus, and a character code input method in which character information of each track can be easily inputted.
Another object of the invention is to provide a digital signal recording system, a character code input apparatus, and a character code input method in which character information by different character forms can be easily recorded into each corresponding area.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a digital signal recording system, a digital signal recording apparatus, and a digital signal recording method in which by fetching information from a homepage on Internet, information such as recorded contents of a CD or the like can be easily recorded.
In consideration of the above problems, according to the invention, there is provided a character information copying system for transferring character information from a terminal apparatus to a recording apparatus and recording the received character information onto a recording medium loaded in the recording apparatus,
wherein the terminal apparatus comprises:
receiving means for receiving the character information from a server in which the character information regarding a predetermined program has been accumulated;
display means for displaying the character information received by the receiving means;
selecting means for selecting arbitrary character information from the character information displayed on the display means; and
transfer means for transferring the arbitrary character information selected by the selecting means,
and wherein the recording apparatus comprises:
receiving means for receiving the arbitrary character information which is transmitted from the transfer means of the terminal apparatus; and
recording means for recording the arbitrary character information received by the receiving means onto the recording medium so as to correspond to a predetermined program recorded on the recording medium.
There is also provided a recording apparatus comprising:
receiving means for receiving a series of character information constructed by character information of a plurality of programs selected on a terminal apparatus side;
detecting means for detecting an identifier showing a boundary of the plurality of programs from the series of character information received by the receiving means;
dividing means for dividing the series of character information into character information corresponding to each program on the basis of the identifier detected by the detecting means; and
recording means for recording the character information of each program divided by the dividing means so as to correspond to a predetermined program recorded on the recording medium.
There is further provided a recording method comprising the steps of:
receiving a series of character information constructed by character information of a plurality of programs selected on a terminal apparatus side;
detecting an identifier showing a boundary of the plurality of programs from the series of character information received by the receiving step;
dividing the series of character information into character information corresponding to each program on the basis of the identifier detected by the detecting step;
making the character information of each program divided in the dividing step correspond to a predetermined program recorded on a recording medium; and
recording the character information of each program which was made correspond to the predetermined program onto the recording medium.